1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a portable device, such as a handheld device integrated with a provisioning application to aid in discovery non-network attached resources and providing suggestions for physical setup of the device based on data center needs.
2. Background Information
Management and provisioning software, such as for example Tivoli Provisioning Manager (TPM), helps a system administrator install, deploy, and maintain hardware and software in a heterogeneous environment (e.g. a datacenter). From a central console, switches and load balancers can be initialized, operating systems and software products can be installed, the network can be configured, and patches can be applied.
Such software does a good job of discovering existing network-attached resources and allowing the user to manage these resources. However there are instances where the hardware is not yet on the network (e.g. a new server has arrived and is still in the box). In this situation, the provisioning server cannot normally assist until after the resource is attached to the network.